


Wildflowers

by Apsacta



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Witch - Freeform, a weird fever dream maybe, and other creatures, idk - Freeform, it's a love story though, like very vague memories of drowning and burning?, mentions of death if you squint, might be some symbolism in there but i'll be damned if i can tell what or where, ok here goes, vague mention of goblins, what else?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 01:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30014088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apsacta/pseuds/Apsacta
Summary: The thing with magic is that it lives in her bones, crackles with heat, and it owns her more than she owns it, too ancient to be controlled anyway. It brings the smell of foreign spices and the light of the sun shimmering in the shallow water of the rock pools, words whispered in languages she doesn’t understand, synesthetic memories of people before, but it’s also the feeling of flickering flames, breathing in water, bleeding out stones.They’ll come for you too, one day, it reminds her.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	Wildflowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enlaurement24](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enlaurement24/gifts).



> Couldn't get you a cake, so I made you soup :D  
> It's wonky and rushed (isn't it always), but it's made with love. I'll do better next time.  
> (also, based on that ig post with all the pets, can't find it rn)

The puppy whines and paws at the kitchen door.

There’s always a puppy, it seems, even in memories that aren’t hers. Good company.

It’s lonely, sometimes, this doubt that comes with knowing things.

There’s always a puppy, but this one isn’t hers.

**🏵 🏵**

_The thing with magic is that it lives in her bones, crackles with heat, and it owns her more than she owns it, too ancient to be controlled anyway. It brings the smell of foreign spices and the light of the sun shimmering in the shallow water of the rock pools, words whispered in languages she doesn’t understand, synesthetic memories of people before, but it’s also the feeling of flickering flames, breathing in water, bleeding out stones. They’ll come for you too, one day, it reminds her._

***

The woman comes to her with the last days of winter, and Holly has never really liked winter. She’s never liked the cold, and she’s never liked the dark, and she’s never really liked people, either.

The snow on the roof is only just starting to melt. It falls onto the porch in slow drops. It’s the kind of weather that colours cheeks and stings a little at the back of the throat. It’s a time to hide inside, sit by the fire, look up new spells curled up in a warm blanket, fill up glass jars with crushed up flowers and redo the seals. It’s a quiet time. Calm. People, somehow, don’t seek magic when the weather is too cold.

When the knock on the door comes, it’s loud and unexpected, and it keeps getting louder, very insistent. An annoyance. Until she has no choice but to go and look, thinking something along the lines of _fuck winter, fuck the cold, fuck people, if it’s something about a love potion again, murder, maybe._

And that’s how she appears. At the end of winter, with loud, obnoxious knocking, tearing down doors, bundled in coat and scarves and gloves, a small thing. There is frost at the edge of her breath, and tiny wet drops lost in blonde eyelashes. With doe eyes, and something that looks like a warning in the curve of her smile.

“You’re the witch,” she says, asks, and her eyes widen. She looks at Holly with something. Too much intent.

“Yes, what of it.”

She blushes, her cheeks colouring in slow-motion. It’s not the cold.

“Sorry. I was – expecting something else.”

She says it without any shame, eyes still wide, searching. She wants something.

“What do you want?”

“I think I’m cursed,” the woman says, and that’s that.

She comes to Holly with the last days of winter, and she comes with something dark attached to the soles of her shoes.

***

_She won’t age gracefully._

_It isn’t hard to tell. It never is. It will be sighs and swears, no charm or manners, but complaints, complaints tumbling like pebbles._

_It will be winter, dark and long. She knows it from memories, from how it’s been before, from things that went and things to come. The cold will settle, seep into bones, and make her joints ache. They never could endure time._

_And fog will rise, too, slowly. Tumble, jumble sensations and feelings, harder to know, then, what was them, and what is her._

_She won’t age gracefully._

***

“Stay there,” Holly says, pushes the woman to the corner, locks the door. Rushes. There is something. She shouldn’t have let her in. Something about the eyes, the curve of her eyelashes. She’s been distracted. There is something following her, the smell, not a curse.

In the kitchen there are glass jars with powders and dried flowers, vials of colours, liquids bubbling, carved charms into wooden dices. She takes them all. And she takes the words too, spells hastily thrown onto random pages before, papers, books, incantations. There is something.

She takes a moment to breathe before the door, think. It smells like moss and salt and the forest ground right after the rain, not strong, but there. A woodland thing. Not in the house yet. But close.

“What did you do?” she asks, throws salt behind her left shoulder – you never know.

“So I have been cursed?”

“No. Open your mouth.”

“Is it poison?” she asks, opens her mouth all the same.

“No. Protection. Swallow.”

She lets herself be handled, a good patient, gives out her hand and doesn’t flinch at the water, takes in the words and the signs.

Her hair has come undone and Holly pushes it behind her ear, another discreet spell, for good luck. “It’s good,” she says, and the woman looks up, hopeful. “There’s nothing inside you. It’s only following.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Trust me, it is. You don’t want to be possessed.”

“You’ve seen possessions?” she asks, pushes a little. She doesn’t seem in a hurry to leave, and Holly gets weary. You never know. _They’ll come for you too, one day._

“Not me, the others.” She doesn’t elaborate, neither wants nor needs to. The others, the ones who came before, wisdom stored in the dark corners, not even memories, awareness.

“Is it a demon?” she asks. She takes the charm that Holly places in her palm, touches the carved head with her thumb. A dog.

“Keep this, for safety,” Holly shakes her head, sighs, demons are always their first guess, “don’t be stupid. Demons don’t follow humans. They have better things to do with their time.”

“Oh. A ghost? I’ve been haunted before. My grandpa used to say I attract dark things.”

“That’s ridiculous. It’s not a ghost.”

“What is it, then?”

“What does it matter, what it is? Keep the charm and it won’t come near.” It’s not a demon and it’s not a ghost. It’s something older and more unpredictable. “You’re good to go. Don’t go wandering into the woods again.”

She looks at Holly with surprise, like she’s ready to protest. “I thought witches were old ladies with cats,” she says tentatively, pushed towards the door.

“They are, sometimes. The cat died last month.”

Her mouth opens slowly. She’s still in the house. Holly wants her out.

“I’m sorry, that must be lonely. What’s your name?”

“Shoo.”

“I’m Iris.”

***

_It comes at night, mostly, and it feels like cold waters seeping down your spine, it feels like freezing tendrils stretching along ribs, like struggling to breathe, like being crushed under liquid weight. It feels and it smells like cold walls, like humid cells, like rotting hay and musty air. It feels and sounds like half-whispered words, secrets, like spreading rumours, judging mouths, biting teeth. It feels like death sentences, like the end of everything._

_It’s just a memory. Not even that. Not even real. It’s just a thought. Just a story. It’s something that happened to someone else. Something that happened somewhere else. Eons and galaxies away. Far as the stars._

_It’s just a thought, not even that, not even real._

_It hurts all the same._

***

There is a puppy at the kitchen door, and it whines and it paws at the kitchen door until Holly lets it in. It’s all misshaped, heavy paws and long legs, all excitement and friendliness, and it zooms in the house the first chance it gets. No collar and no name tag, no trace of an owner everywhere. She chases it through the house and it falls asleep on the rug.

She doesn’t have the heart to move it, the puppy stays asleep in front of the fire.

During the night, it eats the protection spell at the front door, and breaks the seals at the window. But it wags its tail when she wakes up, and yaps happily when it’s fed. So the puppy stays.

***

“Witch,” Iris says softly when she comes back, not even a week later, with black tar along her forearm, “witch, it’s still there. I can feel it. I kept the charm. It hasn’t helped.”

And Holly isn’t exactly annoyed or surprised to see her. Disconcerted, mostly. A little bothered, too. If the charm hasn’t held, then it’s not a woodland spirit.

And Holly isn’t sure why she lets her in, then. The charms are still wonky, after the puppy ate most of them. They need more time to grow, and she isn’t sure that they can withstand much as it is. Maybe there’s a look on her face that says help me, maybe she’s just a little too poised and controlled for it to be anything else that a façade. Maybe Holly is just stupid.

“It’s not a tattoo,” she says when Holly takes her arm to get a closer look.

“I know it’s not.” There are words in there, hidden. She can’t read it yet, but it’ll come. “You’d call it a curse, maybe, but it’s not.”

“How do I get rid of it?” she asks, and Holly is vaguely grateful that she doesn’t ask what it is, then, because she wouldn’t know how to explain it.

“You don’t. It needs to be lifted.”

“Can you do it?”

“Maybe. Probably. Not now.”

She doesn’t ask how. They do, sometimes, and there’s nothing that Holly finds more annoying. Magic is about feeling, not about explaining. Sometimes they ask, and sometimes they get annoyed with Holly when they don’t understand. As if magic was something you could explain or understand.

But Iris doesn’t ask. Instead, she looks at Holly for a long time, something soft, and then she says, “It started growing three days ago.”

“You should’ve come immediately,” Holly says, and she doesn’t know why but she feels annoyed. Three days is a long wait to let it grow. “Irresponsible,” she mutters.

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Tell me why your grandfather said you attracted dark things,” Holly says, to distract her from the spells she’s laying down with the tips of her fingers.

“I don’t really know. It’s something he’s always said. Things would follow me home from the woods sometimes. That’s what he said.”

“Hmm. Is there – is there a particular thing that comes to mind?” She pushes inside a little, expecting more darkness than she finds. Some curses aren’t hard to unlock, providing that the bearer is willing to let you go in.

“Not really. I was too young. He talked about – I don’t know, I can’t remember. Things that needed to be fed. He’d leave water and flowers for them on the porch sometimes. And sweets, lots of sweets. I don’t know much about anything else. You’re my first witch, though.” 

Goblins. Holly knows. Goblins will follow you out of the woods and stick to your skin until you give them what they want.

“I still don’t know your name...” she says, when Holly looks at her a little weird. “Is it something to do with magic, why you won’t tell me your name? Like a secret power?”

“No.”

It’s really not. It’s something like Holly doesn’t trust people enough to give them some things.

***

_There is a taste to the fire._

_Sometimes you can feel it on your tongue when you wake up. There is a taste to the fire, hard to believe it but it’s true. It doesn’t taste sweet, and it doesn’t taste sour. It doesn’t taste like ashes, and it doesn’t light up like embers._

_It’s warm and soft, and iron, and sulphur too. It’s sudden like rain, and salty like the sea, and it stings in the wounds, biting, biting, biting. And it comes gently, lapping up, and up, and up. Skin and bones and flesh. Together._

_It doesn’t hurt for long, not really. It breathes like smoke, pricks like needles, stings like eyes turning red. Licks at toes. And it’s warm, and it’s warm, and it’s warm. And it’s hot. And it burns._

_There is a taste to the fire, and it doesn’t taste like ashes, and it doesn’t light up like embers. It tastes like smoke, and iron, and sulphur, and the sweet relief of shutting down just before it hurts._

_It tastes like falling asleep._

***

It’s the puppy that finds the toad, on the front porch, just waiting. The puppy sniffs and barks and looks at Holly with excitement, but the toad doesn’t move. It’s big and ugly and just looks bored.

“It’s not food,” she says to the puppy, but it seems way too scared of the toad to try and touch it. Still, she keeps the puppy inside all afternoon, until the toad is gone.

By morning, the toad is hiding in the rue that’s meant to protect against minor evil, and the plant has started to die. There is nothing to do but take it inside and feed it spiders in the old fish tank.

***

“Witch,” Iris says when she’s back on the couch, with her fingers clasped around a cup of tea, and her arm still darkened with words that neither of them can read. And a month has passed but there is no trace of goblin yet, and Holly is getting impatient. “What would you say if I asked you to come with me to the lake? There are ducks.”

And Holly sighs because Iris never listens to anything and she doesn’t know that goblins can get impatient too, when they don’t get what they want. 

“I would say no. And I would remind you that you are not supposed to be out in the woods alone.”

“Hence the invitation,” Iris counters quickly, all tentative smiles.

She’s hard to figure out, sometimes, not half as worried as she should be. And she brings pie when she comes. And Holly doesn’t get it. People who come to get curses lifted don’t usually do so with a smile, and they don’t sit on her couch and have tea while her puppy sleeps on their laps. People who come say witch with the edge of their mouths and look at the ground, and they hurry outside. People who come don’t smile.

“You grandpa was right. You shouldn’t go into the woods.”

“You’re mean sometimes. Are you casting more spells on me?”

“I am not casting spells on you. It’s a protection charm. And I’m done.”

“So no walk?”

She shakes her head. People, sometimes. They never know what’s good for them.

“Absolutely no walk. Do I need to keep you here to keep you safe?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” she says, all smiles. “It would save you from being lonely, too. I’d make you tea.” 

“Go. No walks. No woods,” Holly shoos, pushing her towards the door. It’s burning at the back of her neck.

“You’re breaking my heart, witch. Have a good day.”

“It’s Holly.”

***

_There is music, somewhere in the recesses, borrowed._

_It’s not the sound of piano keys, and it’s not the pinching of harp cords, even though those were there too, sometimes. Tiny fingers on black and white keys, feet struggling to reach pedals. Patience sometimes, and sometimes not. Harsh words, hard words, do better, be better, be better, be better, be something else. Be someone else. There were strings under nails and digging through skin, and it hurts, it hurts, but it won’t when you get better._

_There were notes in their heads, notes on pages, and sung back and learned, tumbling down, and trickling up, melodies, feelings, no words._

_But that is not the music that she hears when she sleeps. That’s something older, something ancient, voices melting, melting together, no words, no language, just thoughts, images, forests and lakes and mountains. Voices, together._

_Together, together, together._

_A hum, slow inside chests, a beating, heart, drums, base sounds behind breastbones. Voices, up and up, and up, and up._

_Voices trees wind in leaves blades of grass open plains, together._

_Together._

***

When there’s a goose in the garden, suddenly, and that it eats half of the healing plants in the space of one morning, Holly starts to wonder where they’re coming from, and why they’re systematically trying to break down all her protections, but the goose is an angry thing, and there’s no getting rid of it without being attacked, and the toad is growing fat and happy, and even more ugly, and the puppy has stopped eating charms and is always so excited when it gets company.

So she replants everything, and the goose stays.

***

It’s not that Holly isn’t careful, but the goblin never shows up and she starts to think that it will just hold like that. Maybe it died. Maybe it left.

Maybe it didn’t die, and it didn’t leave either. Maybe it was just waiting, biding its time.

“We have a problem,” Iris says, and she pushes past the door without any greetings, and there’s just that little twitch at the corner of eye, that makes Holly’s heart beat a little bit out of time. It grows as she follows, a little ball somewhere between her ribs, down the hallway and in the bathroom, running water, specks of blood against white tiles.

“What,” Holly begins, but the rest doesn’t follow.

“Okay, I – please don’t freak out, yeah? There was the thing. Like, outside the house last night? You know?”

“What happened?”

“It looked like a dog,” Iris says, a hint of guilt.

“If you tell me you tried to pet it, I will bite you myself.”

“Kinky. It’s still bleeding though. Not much, but it won’t stop.”

She takes the fingers in hers, winces a bit at the wetness, and rubs twice over the wound. “I will smack you,” she warns, “if you do dumb shit again,” and then, “no, it’s not,” when Iris suggests, voice soft ‘ _I think it might be a demon. It had red eyes’._ “Stop moving. It’s a goblin. That’s a goblin bite. You’re fucking stupid. Don’t try to pet goblins. Don’t try to pet anything. Your grandpa was right. You’re a fucking disaster. Goblins are sticky things. It’ll want to take something from you, don’t interact. There, done.”

“How did you do that so easily?”

“I’m just exceptionally good,” Holly says wryly. She keeps the fingers in her hand long after the bleeding has stopped.

“Okay,” Iris says. “Yeah, gotcha. I won’t – do it again. What do we do now, though?”

“We unstick it, I guess.”

“Like an exorcism?”

“Don’t be dumb. Like a conversation.”

***

_The first time, they'll laugh all the way through._

***

It’s a lizard next, on the window sill one morning, and as soon as she opens the window it rushes in, and Holly can’t find for the next twelve hours. When she eventually does, it has chewed its way through half of her best spell book.

And it’s ridiculous, but maybe... maybe someone is using animals to make all her defences crumble. And surely that can’t be good.

(The lizard is funny when it runs, and of course it stays).

***

“So, maybe we should hold hands or something?” Iris asks, and it’s the most ridiculous thing that Holly has ever heard. She seems to think that she’s taking part in a séance or something, and Holly has to bite back a reply.

“Shhh.”

Goblins aren’t demons or spirits or ghosts, and there’s no summoning them. They’re unpredictable, so waiting for them at nightfall doesn’t always work. They can be lured though, with sweets and wine and pretty things. And that’s how they find themselves sitting on the porch at nightfall, when the sky is already way past grey, and the birds have stopped singing a long time ago, and that how Iris finds herself saying, ‘ _maybe we should hold hands or something’._

And Holly would explain it, how nonsensical it all is – and Iris would probably find something to reply, outrageous, surely – but there is something moving in the bushes.

“Shh,” Holly says, and she pushes the biscuits towards the light.

“See, it does look like a dog,” Iris says.

“Shhh.”

It goes like this. The goblin eats the biscuits and drinks the wine, and it doesn’t want to talk. It sits at the edge of the porch and picks at the crumbs, and licks at the glass, and looks at the moon.

“What do you want,” Holly asks, because goblins always want something, but it doesn’t answer and looks at the house. The puppy is going crazy against the door.

So it goes like this. The goblin eats the biscuits, and drinks the wine, and sits in silence, and refuses to leave. Goblins aren’t demons, you can’t ban a goblin. They leave when they want to.

“What’s with all the animals,” Holly asks, but the goblin just shakes its head.

So, it goes like this. The goblin sits on the porch, and picks at the crumbs and licks at the glass, and looks at the moon, and listens to the puppy whining behind the door, and then it hides in the bushes and looks at them.

“Maybe it just wants company?” Iris suggests, and Holly calls her dumb, because that’s what she got into the way of doing. 

By the end of it, they’re holding hands, but Holly has no idea how it happened.

***

_Light sparkles in the water, blinding._

_Little windows. Specks of colour. Bright patches, and the water that laps at the edge of the pool, slow._

_Gentle wind, pushing, blowing. Ripples. Circles. Magic._

_And stones, and rocks, all around, solid under bare feet. And the air is bright and open, hazy over the horizon. And grains of sand, tickles, prickles between toes. And the ground is hard when you push against it, heels dug through sand, small castles, toes burrowing through, seeking rocks._

_And there, back in the water, patches of light, rainbows, small fishes waiting for the tide, tiny crabs scuttling away._

_Wind in hair, and voices carried over, laughing, calling, happy._

_Happy._

_She’s never been to the sea._

***

The goblin lives in the bushes now, so Holly tries alone the next time, and it goes like this. She traps it with a curse and trades answers for tiny fishes, and the goblin hisses and scratches like a hungry cat. There’s no moon and no stars, and the flowers in the garden all wilt away, and by the time they’re done she’s lost a thing or two in the process, but she'll gain some things too, and the sun is going to rise soon.

The goblin lives in her garden now, so Holly tries alone, and when she decides to, it goes like this. _I don’t want you around, you will distract me_ , she says, and Iris says ‘ _Oh?_ ’ and her eyes grow wide and her smile grows big like a hungry cat, but she makes tea when it’s done, and puts Holly to bed with kiss.

The goblin stays in the garden, then, and by the time Holly wakes up it’s built its house behind the shed, and the puppy is barking and Iris had said, _I’ll come back, yeah_ , even though the goblin has left her, and when Holly asked why she said, _I like you,_ but maybe that’s the part that Holly’s dreamed.

And that’s that.

***

_White and yellow and purple and blue, popping up in the fields at the edge of summer._

_Soft petals, light hearts, bright colours, head towards the sun, reaching. The fields behind the house, it echoes in the silence, home._

_Home, but there are no fields behind the house now, just trees. No fields, no flowers, a different kind of home._

_Colours still, in the grass, at the edge of summer, colours and echoes, and heads reaching out towards the sun. Soft bodies in tall grass, angles and planes. Lips. Fingers. Skin, colour, light. Soft, soft, soft. Hands in hair, on skin. Lying down, back against the earth, solid, high grass and blue skies, all around._

_And fingers, skin, lips. Yours, yours, yours. Always._

_Earth and rocks, and trees, and bones, solid, and water and fire and voices, soft. Hearts. Solid. Solid. And lying down in high grass still, hands, mouths, bones, and yours, still, and home, still. Home._

_Soft petals, bright colours, fingers towards the sun, reaching. Wildflowers at the end of spring._

_And white, yellow, purple and blue. I love you, I love you, I love you._

***

“Hi,” Iris says, all flustered. Not even a day has passed, and she's all red and she laughs all breathy. “I got you something.”

“If it's another goblin...”

“No, no. I promise. No more goblin pets. I – I brought you a kitten.” And she opens her jacket, and there is cat there, trembling, hidden away in a pocket. A tiny black cat with huge ears, blinking at the light.

“I brought you a kitten,” she repeats, all smiles.

“Wait a second. Is the rest of this fucking menagerie your doing?”

“I didn’t want you to be alone.”

“But why?”

“I told you. I like you.”

She comes with the end of winter and doesn’t leave with the end of spring, and that’s that.

***

_The thing with magic is that it lives in her heart, and it takes a lot of space. It feels cold, sometimes, a frozen lake sort of thing, and it’s very demanding. It’s a little bit hurtful, and a little bit dark, and a little bit dangerous. It’s like cobwebs sometimes, and it has to be pushed away, dusted down, shaken a bit, to make more space. The thing with magic is that it lives in her heart, takes a little bit of space, alongside a clumsy puppy and a scared kitten, an angry goose, a lizard with an affinity for paper, a particularly ugly toad, and a very determined wife who moves in with a dog that looks like a bear and a fish that doesn't look like something that people should be allowed to keep as pets._

_(And a goblin at the end of the garden that likes to play ball with the dogs sometimes.)_

**🏵 🏵**

She won’t age gracefully.

It isn’t hard to tell. It never is. It will be sighs and swears, no charm or manners, but complaints, complaints tumbling like pebbles.

It will be winter, dark and long. She knows it from memories, from how it’s been before, from things that went and things to come. The cold will settle, seep into bones, and make her joints ache. They never could endure time.

And fog will rise, too, slowly. Tumble, jumble sensations and feelings, harder to know, then, what was them, and what is her.

She won’t age gracefully. She will not age alone.


End file.
